


The Witching Hour

by I_reallyreally_hatemakingusernames



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Werewolves, Canon-Typical Violence, Fix-It, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Witches, but if you're not into that it's gonna take a while, in this one the narrative isn't racist or misogynistic what a concept, mostly this is just me having fun with witches, smeyer has no rights here, so did lauren mallory, the wolf pack deserved better, this will probably be bella/jacob eventually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:34:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22541806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_reallyreally_hatemakingusernames/pseuds/I_reallyreally_hatemakingusernames
Summary: “Step away from her,” the first voice said.“Or what?” Victoria’s reply was low and perfect and—not quite mocking.The air came alive. There was nothing left in me to feel anything but pain, but…there was something, buried deep, that felt a little bit like terror. A little bit like awe.“Or I make you.”(aka that AU where Edward leaves, and the supernatural Bella faces alone is not werewolves, but witches.)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 32





	1. The Meadow

**Author's Note:**

> So, the violence in this chapter is as much as this story is going to get, and I'm pretty sure it's not enough to rate this adult or explicit, but if you think I need to, or to tag for graphic descriptions of violence, please let me know!

I was focusing on the pain in my feet. The rub, almost blistering, on the soles, the burn of my toes from slamming into the front of the boots. I was focusing on the trailing cut on my hand from a twig I hadn’t managed to bat away, and the itch of sweat under my hair, and it was enough. It had to be, because I wasn’t thinking about the pain in my chest.  
I couldn’t. (I couldn’t breathe, and my ribs were hurting right along with my pounding head and my fingers were digging into my sides, keeping myself together—)  
I wasn’t thinking about miles walked, or whether I’d been here before. Just the throbbing in my feet and the burn at the back of my throat. Just those little pains, enough to drown out everything else, to keep me here and now, if I just focused—  
And then I ducked through an arch of spindly branches knotted together, ferns scraping at my neck—

I stepped into the meadow.

Everything went quiet.

_Calm before the storm_ , part of me whispered. But the rest of it was just...still. Just recognizing, instant and familiar as breathing. The eerily flawless circle of it, the trees ancient, perfect sentinels, arching up around it. The stream bubbling quietly in the background.

It was still beautiful.

It looked nothing like it had.

The clouds were heavy enough that nothing could’ve shone. Even if there had been flowers, they wouldn’t have caught the light on delicate petals, drank it down and given it back, shimmering and fragile and as surreal as—

The grass was dead. Brown tufts, scraping over each other in the wind.

I was on my knees. My chest punched its way open again, and I gasped—the pain hummed in every inch of me, but it was cold. All the way in my bones, ice so sharp it felt like a knife. Too cold to go numb. Just to burn, here at the edge of the meadow I had tried so hard to find. Unable to go any farther.  
What was the point?  
There was nothing left. Nothing lingering here in the air that I could grab and hold and—  
What had I been _thinking_?  
There was nothing here but the memories, and those I could have any time. I’d been telling myself not to, because of the pain, but that had me now anyways.  
The world spun, and skewed off its axis—I was grabbing at the dead grass, digging my nails into the dirt, and none of it felt real. The grasping hand wasn’t mine. The empty lungs—I could hear myself retching, gasping for breath, but I didn’t feel it. Nothing in my throat, in my chest. Just space, cold and lonely and waiting, never to be filled.  
Nothing, just like my nightmares.  
 _At least you’re alone_ , something murmured. _If Jacob was here, you could never have explained. He would never have understood_.  
That hurt. That—felt—because how could I be grateful? Grateful that Jake was in the hospital? Just so I didn’t have to have an audience for this? Just so I didn’t have to deal with the consequences of having dragged him into finding the meadow, having used him for something he never would’ve done if he’d known—  
I had to go. I had to get up, get gone. I would crawl if I had to.  
I could, because I didn’t have to be okay, because I was alone. I was lucky, I was alone—  
I dug my hand out of the ground, forced myself out of the tiny, pathetic ball. The hole was screaming—but that was what it always was. I’d just forgotten, with Jake there for so long. (I had to remember. I was alone, and he was better off for it.) I wrenched myself to my feet, satisfaction bitter through the pain.

And someone stepped out from the trees across the clearing.

For an instant, I couldn’t see anything but the cold grace of the motion, and stupid as it was, I hoped.

Then I saw the hair.

Red as blood. Red as fire, over the stone-pale skin—  
 _“Stand very still.”_  
I flinched, fighting the urge to whip to the side—I knew that voice. That was _him_. All velvet and music, even wound through with dread—  
But he wasn’t here. That was the point. He left. He didn't want me. Didn't care. He left, and he wasn't coming back, and now...  
“Victoria,” I said.  
The woman across the clearing tilted her head to the side, languid and easy, and smiled.  
 _“Stay quiet,”_ the memory—it was just a worthless _fucking_ memory—begged. _“Stay calm.”_  
But I could feel my heart pounding again. Beating for the first time since he walked away with it. And the world was turning solid around me, and sharp, like if I reached out to touch it it would slice me open, and everything tasted like fear—

“Bella,” she purred. “Where is he?”  
 _“Lie.”_  
 _What’s the point?_ I thought at him, at the hallucination. What was the point of any of it? He left, walked away and broke me, and his world stayed anyways…  
Underneath the fear, satisfaction bubbled. It was stupid, and selfish—the least Charlie deserved was for me to regret this. What it would do to him. Especially after he told me to stay out of the woods…  
But Edward had failed. He hadn’t been able to take this from me—I was staring across the meadow at a woman so beautiful it hurt, in a way I’d been starting to think I’d imagined. I was going to die with incontrovertible proof that he had been real.

“He left,” I spat—the memory of him groaned, and my hands shook at my sides. “He left me. You want to kill me? He won’t care.”  
Victoria stepped forward—painfully slow, when I knew how fast they could run. Bared teeth that gleamed, even in the shadows.  
Part of me wanted to laugh.  
“It’s true. You want to hurt him? You want him to feel what you did? Too bad, because he didn’t care, not like that, and there’s nothing you can d—”

I heard the bones in my leg break before I felt them.

Just a crack. Like thunder. Like breaking mirrors—  
It was fire, stabbing its way out of me. I let myself fall—and the weight was gone but it kept burning—  
My head cracked against the ground. Stars erupted over the gray clouds, the looming trees—  
 _“Stay quiet,”_ Edward hissed. _“Don’t give her any reason to keep hurting you—Bella, please—”_  
I screamed, more out of spite than anything—and then there was a crushing weight on my ribs, and I had no more air to scream with.

She bent over me. Her eyes were red, and wild, and her curls whirled in the wind, like fire, eating up the forest, the sky.  
Cold fingers bit into my wrists, and pain erupted—I writhed, frozen under the weight of her, and something in my chest cracked.  
“It was still your fault,” she whispered, twining lower—close. So close it felt like a parody of a kiss. “You think he doesn’t care, little one? I think he cares too much."

The fingers clenched harder. Something shattered.

"I think I’ll kill you, and then I’ll find him and tell him how and _it will break him._ ”  
Her eyes were glistening. Her teeth were bared. Iridescent. So close. Too close. She didn’t look real.  
My leg was on fire—  
“The only question now is how I do it.”  
I wondered if I could kill myself. Could move quick enough. Could make myself bleed—if I bled, would she drain me? Would she—like James, like Jasper, like—

“Doesn’t care,” I wheezed, “Doesn’t care, left me—”  
She bent even closer, until her nose was just against mine—her breath smelled like his. Like cold and flowers.  
There was a haze over everything (except my leg my wrist _ow ow ow_ ) but—her eyes.  
They were mad.  
They were empty.  
There was—

“James didn’t care about me either,” she whispered—like a secret, like _what a stupid lamb_ like—“But he was all I had. And I won’t live with nothing.”

Then she was gone and—  
Something smashed into my stomach. Her face was farther, twisted—I was broken, erupting—vomiting but _not_ I was on my back I was  
 _help_  
couldn’t even say it—  
“Run,” she spat-snarled- _ow-ow_ —“Try to run. Try to live, I dare you.”

There was a reason. Reason not to. Voice in my head. Voice like velvet. Lay quiet make her finish it there was—  
Ice in my side. Kicking. I flew, whirled, _broke._ Landed on my stomach.  
No more breath. Just the tight-pain-stinging—  
My left hand was _ow_ -fire-broken, I reached with my right—dug it into dirt—pulled.  
The velvet voice didn’t like it. I pulled harder—couldn’t remember why.  
Couldn’t move my right leg. Just fire. Just dragging through dirt-dead-grass, breathless—

“Bella!”

I knew that voice.  
I was certain of it, suddenly. Through the pain—I knew that voice—and behind-over-upon me there was a terrible stillness. Like…  
Fear.  
“Bella!”  
The voice again. Not the velvet one—higher, and softer, and far more...desperate.  
“Wait, Ange—fuck—you can’t—”  
That one was nasal and sharp and I flinched despite myself—I knew that one too.  
Victoria was still frozen. So unmoving I could _feel_ her, like a horrible pull of nothingness behind me.

“Step away from her,” the first voice said. It shook—there were more footsteps behind it, pounding so hard I could feel them through the ground of the meadow. Too many to be just one person.  
“Or what?” Victoria’s voice was still low and perfect and—not quite mocking.

The air came alive. It was—singing, warm and brilliant and trembling like an inhale. Like a heartbeat.  
There was nothing left in me to feel anything but pain, but…  
But there was something, buried deep, that felt a little bit like terror. A little bit like awe.

“Or I make you,” said the first voice, and it rang on the same bone-deep resonance as the air.  
The stillness above me shattered. Whirled like a runner too fast to follow—and then I was whirling too. Into fire and ice and the darkness, falling towards pain like fireworks—

I kept my eyes open long enough to recognize Angela, falling to her knees in front of me.


	2. Dreams No Mortal Dared

I was walking through a forest.

It wasn’t one I knew, not where I had chased after _him_ , not the path to the meadow. It was—older. Darker. Trees so tall that I craned my head up and couldn’t find their end, no hint of sky between their branches.

Moss crawled up the black bark, hung in sheets like curtains from gnarled branches, and I ached to run my fingers through it. To bury my hand in trailing green and see if I could find the bark beneath it, or if the plants would swallow my hand before I even got close.

But I had to keep walking.

I was following the raven, after all.

It was huge, so much so that I couldn’t understand how it had space to open its wings among the tight-packed trees, but it flew with ease, and I walked after it.

My leg hurt—distantly, and deep. But it was easy enough to walk on, and I had to keep track of the raven. I knew it, though I couldn’t say why.

Something about its eyes, maybe.

The raven came to a halt, perched on a sprawl of roots twisted taller than my head. Crooked its head, and ruffled wings with feathers that shone iridescent, black-and-blue and edged with purple.

Where was the light coming from?

It locked eyes with me, and this time I wondered faintly what raven eyes were supposed to look like, because these...couldn’t be right. They were brown, and warm, and...familiar. I knew them, if I just had a second to place them—

“Evermore,” the raven croaked, and I startled. That wasn’t right either, was it?

“Quoth the raven, nevermore,” I told it. My voice came out muffled. Like it was being swallowed by fog. But the air was clear, and cold, and—

And there was a door in the arch of the roots.

Had that been there before?

“Evermore,” the raven said again, but this time the voice was as familiar as the eyes. Soft and gentle, just as warm.

White flashed in the trees to my left, and I turned.

It was a bear, towering, brown fur so pale it was almost white. Black lips pulled back over pale fangs, a snarl under eyes that almost looked like glass.

I should’ve been afraid, I knew, but for some reason it just...wouldn’t come.

It felt right, this pale bear in these eerie woods. And that was stupid, and almost scary, but I couldn’t bring myself out of the odd, muffled peace.

I turned back to the raven. It was gone—the door was open.

I stepped through it. (Should it have been more than a step away? I thought—)

There was no raven. Just...sunlight. Blinding, blisteringly hot. The sunlight of a midday desert in Phoenix, sunlight I’d forgotten existed. I closed my eyes, and it burned anyways, red and gold and finally white through my eyelids, sweeping me away—

* * *

“She’ll be awake any second.”

“Are you sure? She looked...”

“I told you, I know what I’m doing! I mean—I’m not saying we shouldn’t get someone to take her to the hospital, because we probably should just to be safe, since—”

“Both of you shut up. Whatever we’re doing, we have to do it fast. Before that _thing_ shows up again, because nobody here has another standoff in them.”

“Hey! I could probably do—something—”

“Jess, I mean this in the nicest way possible: No you couldn’t. Shut up.”

“She...might have a point.”

“Thank you _so much_ for the support, Angela—right, I’m focusing. We’re, um. Sorry, what _is_ the plan now?”

Silence.

Silence, deep and cool against the fire in my skin. And the pain was gone, or muted, but I was so _tired…_

Everything slipped away again.

* * *

Shouting. Someone far away—but running, so fast the dirt beneath my cheek trembled with the force of their feet.

And then there were arms tight around me, and the world was spinning. I wanted to open my eyes, but the pain was back too, hissing to life in my wrist and my leg and my ribs, and it was so _much_ —

“I’ve got you. I’ve got you, Bells.”

 _Charlie_.

His grip loosened, and then I was rocking with his steps. The world was soft and warm and—

“I’m here.”


End file.
